Andrew Jackson Carson

Well, it’s a historical name, but not a unique name for the 1800’s in America. Andrew “Andy” Jackson Carson was the maternal grandfather of Bessie Ethel Wellons Wyant, my grandmother. He was born on June 4, 1848 in Bond County, Illinois (per his obit) and died on December 20, 1911 in Mound Valley, Kansas, where he and his wife Emma spent most of their adult years.

In the 1860 census for Bond County, Illinois, he was 11 years old and living with his parents William and Elisabeth Carson. Both parents were born in Kentucky. His dad was a farmer.

He marries Emaline (spelling varies) Nash, who goes by “Emma”, on May 16, 1875 in Clay County, Illinois.

In the 1880 census, they have moved to Mound Valley, in southwestern Kansas, where they would live out their lives. Andy is 30 and Emma is 26, and their only child at that time is Mary Elizabeth, a 2 year old. Mary Elizabeth is my great grandmother. He is a farmer and reports owning his own farm along with land values and personal property values.

Things appear to have taken a turn for the worse economically over the next 20 years. In the 1900 census in Mound Valley, Kansas he reports being a “farm laborer” and is 51 years old. They are renting a house, not a farm. He reports being able to read, but not write. Emma is 47 and a new daughter, Grace, is 7 years old. Her older sister Mary would have been 22 years old and no longer living with parents.

In 1903 they appear in a city directory in Parson, Kansas. Parsons is 19 miles from Mound Valley, but they still consider themselves from Mound Valley in the next census. A “city directory” was what they called phone books before, and for a while after, people had phones. We called it a phone book most of my life. Now they’ve stopped publishing phone books, meaning it is really hard to find someone when you don’t have their address or phone number. But can you imagine publishing your cell phone number is a book that is given to everyone?

In the 1910 census, Andy, now 61 years old, reports being a laborer in a “railway section”. They live in Mound Valley. He says that he had learned to write. Daughter Grace is now 17 years old and there is a surprise member of the household... 9 year old granddaughter Jessie Wyant. That’s mom’s “Aunt Jessie” to us. It appears that they are hard up for money, but have taken in a grandchild... Jessie is the child of their daughter Mary E..

Andrew Jackson Carson died on December 20, 1911 in Mound Valley, Kansas. I cannot find a death certificate in Kansas, so I don’t know the cause of death. He would have been 63 years old.

My grandmother would not have known her grandfather, since she was a toddler when he died and they were still quite a distance away... 2 hours by car, which they did not have. She would have heard lots of stories from her older sister, our Aunt Jessie.